Scythe Mugen 3 Processor Cooler Review. Page 2

Design and Functionality

The design of the new Mugen 3 cooler looks dramatically different, although you can still find certain resemblance with the previous, Mugen 2, model. The newcomer measures 158x130x108 mm and weighs 835 grams. Let’s take a closer look at it:

The cooler heatsink is still designed with M.A.P.S. (Multiple Airflow Pass-Through Structure) technology in mind, but unlike Mugen 2 it has fewer (four) heatsink arrays instead of five and more (six) heatpipes instead of five:

The copper heatpipes are of the same diameter as before – 6 mm. Each heatsink array consists of 48 aluminum plates, 0.35 mm thick. They are pressed against the heatpipes at 1.8 mm distance from one another:

Each heatsink array is pierced with three copper heatpipes. These heatpipes alternate in the base of the cooler and get evenly distributed across the heatsink arrays:

This ensures that the heat is distributed evenly over the heatsink fins and that the heat transfer is performed in an efficient manner. At the same time I can’t help mentioning that compared with Mugen 2, the new cooler has about 2700 cm2 smaller effective heatsink surface, which equals only 7,920 cm2.

There is an additional aluminum heatsink right above the cooler base. It is 42x52x18 mm big and is designed to remove the heat from the upper part of the heatpipes. The base itself is extremely even and is perfectly finished:

Note that while the heatsink fins are simply pressed against the heatpipes, Scythe used soldering for the base of the cooler. Here the heatpipes lie in specially made grooves with no more than 1.5 mm gaps between one another, and the thinnest part of the copper nickel-plated base beneath the heatpipes is 5 mm.

The thermal paste imprint left by the cooler base on the processor heat-spreader is not totally perfect, because our LGA1366 processor has a slightly uneven surface:

The fan model is SY1225SL12M-P supports PWM rotation speed control and spins at 300-1600 RPM creating 14.7-88.11 CFM airflow. It generates between 9.6 and 32.15 dBA of noise.

The slide bearing should last at least 30,000 hours or 3.4 years if used continuously without stopping. The fan’s maximum power consumption shouldn’t exceed 4.6 W, but it turned out 3.8 W, according to our measurements. The fan startup voltage is 3.8 V.

The fan is attached to the heatsink with two wire clips, which ends should be inserted into special retention holes:

There are no shock-absorbing pads of any kind bundled with the cooler. I think they could have also included an extra pair of wire clips in case someone decides to use a second fan and the heatsink actually allows it. Moreover, Scythe also offers a special Mugen 3 revision called “PC Games Hardware Edition”, which comes bundled with two quiet Scythe Slip Stream 120 fans. Therefore, it is totally unclear why they couldn’t just throw in another pair of wire clips?